It’s the best word I can come up with (OK, the best printable word) to describe the campaign to make Michigan a right-to-work state.

Republican Gov. Rick Snyder and the state’s top legislative leaders said Thursday they would pursue legislation to prohibit “closed shop” union rules, arguing that it would unleash a new era of economic freedom for the state.

It won’t. And simple math — the consistent foil for GOP narratives these days — exposes the great fallacy at the core of what Republicans in Lansing are trying to do.

This is about politics — about punishing unions for their failed bid to enshrine collective bargaining in the state constitution, and about wiping them out as a formidable political base for the state’s Democrats.

The governor — who said for two years this wasn’t part of his agenda, but then buckled this week to right-wing pressure — and the Legislature have also ginned up a transparently false connection between right-to-work and individual liberty.

But none of it is justification for turning the labor-management power dynamic on its head in Michigan.

By the most telling economic indicators, right-to-work states trail states where unions retain the right to make union membership a condition of employment — if the employees they represent vote to do so. There has been significant job growth in many right-to-work states, which have become magnets for companies that want to avoid the kind of wage and benefits that collective bargaining helps assure for working people. Such companies create jobs, alright — just not the kind Michigan legislators would want to see their own kids reduced to.

But job growth in right-to-work states is not leading to economic opportunity up and down the economic ladder, and it may be exacerbating poverty in those states. Meanwhile, the struggles in states like Michigan — where incomes have been declining for a decade, but have still not reached right-to-work lows — have been about the shift away from manufacturing, the nation’s yawning trade deficits and lack of investment in things like job training.

None of that can be solved with right-to-work.

Of the 10 states with the highest per-capita incomes, for example, only one is a right-to-work state, and just three of the top 20 are. On average, right-to-work states have per-capita incomes that trail union states by more than $5,000.

Right-to-work advocates always claim their states are creating more jobs than union states — which holds some truth, if you just look at the sheer number of jobs created.

But of the 11 states with the fastest-growing economies as measured by gross domestic product, only three were right-to-work states in 2011. (Michigan was on that list in 2011, too, which Snyder spent all year this year bragging about. Now, suddenly, he claims our economy is being hobbled by an oppressive union environment.)

As a result, right-to-work states also suffer much worse poverty than union states, by several important measures.

Eight of the 10 states with the lowest overall per-capita incomes are right-to-work. And among the states with the highest rates of people without medical insurance (a sign of the quality of jobs available), seven of 10 are right-to-work. Eight of the 10 states with the highest poverty rates are right-to-work.

Why would Michigan want to emulate those states?

And Snyder’s sudden attempt to couch right-to-work in terms of personal liberty is just insulting. Workers should be free, he said, to choose whether they belong to unions. Senate Majority Leader Randy Richardville, R-Monroe, passionately argued Thursday that he was for liberty in every instance — tying his support for right-to-work to his opposition to the state’s smoking ban and his vote to overturn the motorcycle helmet law.

Come on. Unions are established through democratic votes in a workplace, and can be decertified through the same democratic process. The wage and benefit standards they negotiate apply to everyone in a workplace, too — which is why unions seek closed shops.

That’s not a threat to freedom; it’s the most successful way to leverage the power of labor to negotiate for fair wages and benefits.

Michigan has survived and thrived with that system in place. Right-to-work would erode, rather than enhance, economic progress.
Stephen Henderson is editorial page editor of the Free Press and the host of “American Black Journal,” which airs on WTVS-channel 56 at 2 p.m. on Sundays.